The Dance of the Falcons
by GabrielleduVent
Summary: 1794 - France is still wounded, and Arno Victor Dorian is hurting, mourning for his lost love. But when his friend and a fellow Assassin issues an ultimatum that he must put aside the past and dedicate himself to the Order, or leave the Brotherhood entirely, he must delve deep into the past to make the decision that will redefine the existence of the Assassin Brotherhood for him.
1. Prologue: Paris, 1794

Welcome to _The Dance of the Falcons_! Do note that this is myfirst draft, and therefore is bound to be awkward and clunky. There are also OCs present... I originally planned this to be a friendship story between two men, but I am getting frustrated of not seeing girl Assassins save Winifred. So I made two. (Everyone else belongs to Abstergo Ubisoft.)

This story goes back and forth in time, spanning from the fall of Alamut to about the reign of Napoleon. _It will not address AC 3 and 4_. The Three Musketeers do show up, as well as Ezio, Altair, Machiavelli and the like. _  
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So with that being said, here we go!

Prologue: Atop Les Invalides

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><p>Arno Victor Dorian was hurting.<p>

Two years had passed since the fateful encounter with Germain; two years since the death of his childhood friend and his love; two years since his return to the Order. And yet the pain was still fresh in his mind, the futility of the final moment when Elise, his beloved Elise, had not listened to him and had rushed head-on to her death. If he had been faster, if he had been stronger…

If. If. If.

And so he sat on the roof of Les Invalides, overlooking Paris that spread before him, a morose expression his face. He wasn't handsome, although he might have been deemed attractive; now, tempered with grief, his expression was serious, that faint mirth gone, his mien razor-sharp. A face of an Assassin, although he had not yet realised it, and will not do so for many more years; a face that knew the gravitas of life, and the cost of taking it. The face that had accepted the cost for the greater good, the face that knew no allegiance, except to better the world. His brown hair was held with a ribbon at the nape of his neck, but it was hidden under the hood.

"There you are," said a low voice. "I had to look all over for you."

The man in the blue coat looked up, saw a woman. Slender and tall, she stood on the roof, a little behind him, dressed in grey and black. A grey coat and black trousers, an offence punishable by death, yet she wore them, partly because she needed to, but also because she was sure she'd never be caught. The hood was off, exposing her dark, glossy hair that was plaited like a tail. A sword was at her hip, a pistol on her belt. She looked every part a man, except Arno knew that she was not.

"Aliénor," he murmured.

Aliénor de la Fere sat next to him. Arno realised it would have been absurd for this woman to sit next to him, let alone know him by name, had the Revolution not happened. But here she was, her feet dangling, her eyes looking into the sunset. The descendant of Olivier de la Fere, she would have been living in Versailles, serving under _La Austrichienne_, dressed in silks and complaining of the clogged furnace. But the downfall of her father had been the downfall of her house, and her path had taken an unexpected turn; then again, so had his.

A common story indeed; the games in Versailles were indeed complicated and more than treacherous, and many fell with one wrong word or an errant glance. But Aliénor had apparently inherited the spirit of her forefather, for she had sought out the Assassin Brotherhood, and had begged admittance into the order. Arno knew of her as an apprentice, but she had been apprenticed to someone else, and so only vaguely noticed her. She had been a girl then, as he had been barely older than a boy; but now she was a grown woman, an Assassin in her own right. An educated woman who had her own thoughts, she had been the one to demand Arno's re-admittance. He had not wanted it, but she had proved to be a good friend, a good comrade, and a trustworthy partner, and who was he to refuse her friendship?

"Still hurting?" Aliénor asked softly.

Arno glanced at the woman, but she was still looking at the sunset. He did not want to answer, so he kept his silence.

"You are, aren't you?"

"And how is that any of your concern?" Arno snapped, then saw a flash of pain cross her face. "_Pardonnez moi,__" _he said hastily.

"Apology accepted," replied Aliénor. "It is a personal matter, after all. But you also have to realise, you're lucky, you know," the daughter of de la Fere continued. "Very lucky to have enjoyed the love, had someone love you back." She shrugged. "I never had that chance."

"No?"

"After St Just ordered my father's death… no." She smiled. "Hunting down the culprit, sending him to his death was all I could ever think about… although the public did that, in the end. _Publicum iustum est_. And afterwards… well, I hadn't the time. The order demands all of me, and I'm not as lucky as my ancestor. So I am a Catherinette."

"Ancestor?" Arno echoed. But Aliénor ignored it. She turned, her face serious.

"I need to talk to you," she said quietly. The sun was setting, casting a dark shadow over her face, turning her alabaster skin to a mesh of black and white, giving her cheekbones a higher profile. Arno looked at her.

"Well, talk," he urged.

"I know you're distracted recently," Aliénor said. "Arno, I hate to say this, but… you need to focus."

"Did you come to lecture?"

"No." She shook her head. "But what I'm saying is… the Assassins never really had a chance at a happy life, Arno. Altair ibn al-Lahad's personal life was filled with grief, and the famed Assassin Ezio Auditore gave everything up for the Order."

"I already know, Aliénor." And that he did, oh so well; if she hadn't been the daughter of a Templar, if he hadn't been the son of an Assassin… who knew? "I know that too well. What is your point?"

"No, you don't know," came back the sharp reply. Arno frowned, displeased. "Look, I know this is unfair, but none of us have the luxury to look at the past as much as we want to. A new age is coming, and France is still wounded, Arno. Look around you. The Jacobins are turning on each other, people are still starving, the peasants are revolting… and our work isn't done yet." She sighed. "So you have to make a decision, sooner or later. You can leave the Order, live a normal life as normal people do, spend time mourning the losses. Or you can remain, but then… now isn't the time to mourn for us, Arno. And your distraction can cost you your life. And mine. Jean-Philippe's. Arno…" she took a deep breath. "We can't lose you."

"But we can afford to lose you, Aliénor?" He raised an eyebrow. "Did the elders set you on this?"

Aliénor smiled bitterly. "I wish. No." She brushed the back of the hand against her cheek. "My life… is dispensable," she murmured. "The elders know it… and I know it. No one will mourn me when I'm gone, but you, you…" he heard her take a deep breath. But instead of continuing, she stuck her hand inside the folds of grey wool. "Here," she said, pulling out a slender volume from the folds of her grey coat. "Maybe this'll help you make the decision."

"What is this?" Arno asked. The volume was old, bound in leather, the paper brittle; the leather was smooth under his fingertips, and bore no markings, save the Assassin symbol overlaid with a mark of a feather. "I don't think I've ever seen this."

"No," the woman agreed. "It's my possession, not the Order's. My maternal ancestor was a Venetian named Bianca Nero, who went by the name of La Rossa. She was an Assassin, you see… it looks like the Assassin Brotherhood takes in a lot of youths whose parents have had misfortunes. Like me." Another smile, but it almost appeared as if she was on the verge of tears to Arno. "Anyway, when Ezio Auditore da Firenze travelled to Masyaf, he found this book, or the original of it, and when he returned to Firenze, he gave the copy of the book to La Rossa. That book," she pointed at the volume in Arno's hand, "was bound by Ezio Auditore's wife. And well, I later found out that the woman in that book is La Rossa's ancestor. So call it my grand family history, if you will."

"And this is supposed to help me?"

"I think it will." And then she stood up, pulled on her hood, and with a twist of her heel, she was gone.


	2. I: Paris, 1794

lalalalwlwl - wow, paranoid much? Alienor won't be stuck with Arno, partly because I really, really don't like that guy. I'm not going to throw (one of my) heroines to guys I don't like! So rest assured.

Thegallopingcupcake - I don't have a definite storyline yet, since it's going to be a bit like what happens in most of the AC games, AKA going back in history. There will be 4 heroines in this story, and if you've read the Three Musketeers, you'll see familiar names.

Iamonemagicvortex - Thanks. I'm just starting off with this one, so it's going to have rewrites... as I've done with the previous stories. There's also a Dragon Age fic going on, so I'm juggling three fics at one go. We'll see.

I: At Café Théâtre

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><p>Arno returned to Café Théâtre soon after. It was already night, and evenings made the danger grow thricefold in comparison to the day; Paris took on a different face during the day, like a whore with a painted mask on to attract the customers, but with a sinister and rotten core beneath. Miscreants and rogues thrived in the faint darkness, murdering and thieving as they wished, and no amount of attempt to bring order would stop it; not that the current regime was much concerned with such petty things, it appeared, for they seemed far busier squabbling over the power, trying to off each other to get the larger slice of pie. As he crossed the bridge, he was deep in thought, wondering just why Aliénor had spent her energy trying to find him and deliver the volume to him. She wasn't someone to speak when it wasn't necessary, and it was even likely she won't speak when it <em>was<em> necessary. She was quiet, as if excessive words would give too much of her away. A miser was she, begrudging her peers from knowing too much about her. Only Julie Bertouille, her mentor, knew it, and Julie was just as taciturn as her student.

The cafe was still busy, with a raucous noise filtering out even to the outside, a merry scene that completely escaped the owner's attention. He slid into the side corridor then up the stairs and into his room. The sword came off, as well as his belt, and he sat down in his chair, next to the box where he kept Elise's letters; but this time he studied the volume in his hand. He opened the cover after the cover told him nothing of its contents save the affiliation. The volume had seen many hands and owners, its secrets divulged to each who dared to open the cover, and now it came to him, bequeathed by a woman who had forgotten how to be a woman. The book smelled of fern, but Arno caught a faint whiff of blood, as if the very writing about an Assassin brought about the scent.

The first page bore the inscription, written in a masculine hand. _Per la mia amica, La Rossa,_ said the script, then signed _Ezio_. Oddly enough, there was a tiny portrait done in ink below the inscription, a near spitting image of Aliénor, save that La Rossa's eyes were more slanted, while his friend's were more almond; a simple sketch, but the deft strokes had captured the Renaissance Assassin's features well. Arno studied it for a moment, noticing the subtle differences between Aliénor and her ancestor; the Venetian's brows were more arched, and her lips were thinner. But the resemblance was there. She was truly the thoroughbred child of the Order, coming from a line of Assassins; but that also meant her bloodline was fraught with tragedy. Was his too? He wondered. He had not really heard about his familial past from his father, both biological and adoptive, and it would take many months of research to figure it out now, especially because many of those who had known his biological father were now gone; Mirabeau, Bellec, Dambert… with their deaths they had taken that knowledge to the realms beyond. How much knowledge had been lost because the owner died prematurely? Millions of fragments, now lost to the time… he cast a sideway glance into the flame of the candle. It flickered as he moved.

Upon turning the page, Arno found that the rest of the book was in Latin. Tiny inscriptions marked the margins, by at least five different hands, some in French, some in Italian, and some in Latin; this volume had passed through many hands, and now it sat in his own, waiting for its secrets to be exposed, like a woman clad in red waiting for a man to expose her secrets and open her white body… he had a mental image of Aliénor clad in a deep red gown for a moment, and wondered. She must have had a moment, once, when she would don a gown, put her hair up in an elaborate coiffure, jewels around her neck, perfumed and rouged; and he, once, had run around Versailles, a small child vying for apples in velvet and silk. But now, the Assassin's blade adorned their wrists, the blood of their victims heavy in their hearts, tragedy scarring their once-carefree youths. It probably showed in their faces as well, engraved in tears and blood and grief; Aliénor's face had the gravity, a cruel sternness that Elise's never had, and it was stark because her face did not seem to know how to wear such an expression. The pain had made her countenance a brittle mask of ice that marred her expressions into nothingness, and his into that of a ravaged man who had seen far too many deaths and tragedies that no one deserved.

_You need to make a choice,_ she has said. Arno wondered if she had made her own, then concluded that she probably had; Aliénor had always kept a shell about her, hard and cold, that refused kindness. She gave but never received, helped but never asked for it; such a difference from Elise, who had not been hesitant to rely on him, even demand from him. A blade, her mentor had said once, that had been tempered by blood and tears into a lethal sharpness that did not know when to stop taking lives. When he had gone to help Aliénor, she had not refused his help, and had thanked him, but looked surprised at his entry onto the stage. She later admitted that she had never really expected anyone to help. She was always alone, he recalled, because she did not ask for help, never expected any. Too prideful and too stubborn.

_Elise. Elise, what would you say if you saw me now? Ma cherie, you never liked the Assassins__… and now I do not know what to believe. I am still in the past, but the time moves on… _

He flipped the page, and much to his dismay, a folded piece of parchment fell onto the floor. The parchment was old, possibly by a few years. The gold seal was broken, and he opened it, wondering what it was. The fact that it was a personal correspondence did not occur to him until halfway through the letter.

It was a love letter, short in length, but sweet, filled with hope and youthfulness. A wooing letter, filled with words of affection. He assumed it had been addressed to the owner of the book; the handwriting was masculine, the loops with less flourish than the addressee's, but still neat.

_You tempt me from my calling, _it said, _and I wonder if this is fate or something else. Oh, but were you a temptation to turn me away from God, how can you be so good? Few of words, yet none shall deny the goodness of your heart, my dearest friend. My heart aches because I am away from court, or so thinks my father, but in truth, it is because I am away from you__…_

He checked the signature. _Maurice_, it said, nothing more. He had never heard of him, nor heard Aliénor mention anyone in her life, save her family. But it was clear now that, once, Aliénor de la Fère had made the choice, to live as a woman, or to live as an Assassin. And for whatever reason, she had picked the latter, sacrificing everything else for the Order, and now, demanding him to do the same, or leave. She had picked justice over love, and had cut out the part that made one a woman. She had sealed her past away with all the bitterness and tears, keeping it only a memory, asleep inside a book, never looking back. Once he had failed, using the Assassin brotherhood for his own personal missions, but that would be allowed no longer. France was still bleeding, the people still suffering under the aftermath of the Jacobins and their tyranny, the yokes of terror bruising Paris to Calais even now. And she, a mere woman, had picked justice over love, the public over the self. As many before her had done, with blade and words.

_France is still wounded__… _

He folded the letter and slid it beneath the last page of the volume, feeling a little guilty for reading someone else's letter that was never meant for his eyes. He flipped back to the front of the book and located the first page; the writing began. His Latin was slightly rusty, and he realised he'd need a dictionary before finishing the volume, and so he went to the shelf to find one. He had not been exactly studious in his youth, and now he slightly regretted it, but that couldn't be helped. Returning to his seat, he began reading, sometimes pausing to figure out the meaning, supplemented by the notes in the margins. Some of the notes, he saw, were Aliénor's, the writing cramped but even, the flourish and the loops well-defined.

But soon he forgot about everything about the owner of the volume, or the gaping wound in his heart, as he began reading the book in earnest.

"My name is Elizabeth Falconwood," the narrative began without fanfare. "Not that this matters much, for the members of our order is to remain nameless, notoriety a mark of ineptitude; but I am the last surviving bearer of the name, and so it must be written down here, otherwise my family shall be gone in the sea of the dead. And so I write again: I am Elizabeth Falconwood, a _Fida__'i_ as the natives call us, a self-sacrificing agent."

Arno paused for a moment. So this was some memoir of an Assassin from times past… but the name was English, some terminology Arabic. Was she an Englishwoman who had somehow ended up in the Order? He stopped thinking about it and read on, curious whether his questions would be answered.

"But all stories have beginnings," the writer continued, "and my story begins in the town of Leicester, where I was born. I was the eldest of three children, born to Edmund Falconwood, a knight serving the city, and the descendant of Edwin Falconwood, who had participated in the Crusade. He later married a Castilian, or so it has been told. My mother - Emma Dallstone - was a woman of fair hair and light eyes, which passed onto my sister Edwina. My brother Edward and I have dark hair and dark eyes, a legacy from the Castilian ancestor. I was two when Edward came to this world, and ten years later, Edwina was born. A fair child was she, sweet of disposition and quick to smile, her blond hair like a cloud and her blue eyes a little darker than my mother's.

It had been Thursday, that day; had it been on a Sunday, I may have seen some grand plan behind the tragedy that befell my family; but alas, it was Thursday, so it just became a terrible, foggy night in my mind, indelible, always there, like an ugly stain.

My father was gone that day and came back in the early evening, a little tired but in good humour for being able to come back early; my brother was bewitched by the new toy that had come all the way from Londinium, some wooden contraption that I still do not know of its purpose. My mother was feeling a little under weather, and my sister Edwina was in high spirits, although she did not know why. How was any of us to know that things would change in a few hours?

They came under the dark of the night, those men I later swore to kill and travelled all the way to the land of the Arabs to learn the art. For killing men is not just an act of brute force, but it requires finesse and a certain purge of the soul. It is, indeed, an art to be pursued, a morbid art but artistry indeed. They destroyed my family and I in but a few hours, that happy Christian family, without much aspiration beyond the bounds of the town, my father hoping for a new horse, my mother for a new rosary; we were not a greedy family, and nothing warranted for what we had gone through that night."

So Elizabeth _was_ an Englishwoman. An Englishwoman who had ended up as an Assassin… the Levantine order, no less, from he looks of it. He had vaguely read of Maria Thorpe, but she had not been _trained_ as an Assassin, and it appeared that this woman wasn't the same.

"I write these words now, decades later, and still I am tormented by what I was forced to see; my fair infant sister, knowing nothing of the evils of the world, they ripped apart while laughing, slicing her tiny limbs away one by one, all the while making my mother watch as they raped her. Father they killed outright. When they were done with my mother and my sister, they came to me, and they forced themselves upon me, one by one, laughing as if it was the funniest thing in the world. I could do nothing, and so they took everything away.

The only one to remain relatively unharmed was my brother. Poor Edward, forced to hide under the bed, all the while as his sisters and his mother screamed as we were violated; I had forced him to stay under the bed, and he, an obedient child, obeyed, unable to do anything but watch. When they were done, they left, taking all valuables they could find, although they had not realised they had already taken what was most treasured in the household. And I was bereft of my virtues, my brother of his words. When the morning came, we were the only ones alive.

My brother they took, my uncle and my aunt, for they were childless and wanted an heir; but a girl they did not want, so I was left to my own fate, and a girl of twelve, deprived of her womanly honour, has only one path to make her livelihood. I refused to join a convent; how could I believe in God when he had allowed such thing to happen? Perhaps we were all sinners, accumulating our own share as the days passed, but my sister, my darling Edwina, what had she done? And if this was God's will, that she is 'too dear and therefore God called her back to the Kingdom of Paradise' as the priest had said, why give her life only to take it away? Why not just keep her there? Why?

I did not become the bride of Christ. And when a girl of twelve, deprived of her womanly honour, with no family to rely on, nothing to lose, is left to her fate, she has one path to take. Two years later, I was in Damascus, selling my womanhood to whoever would pay. Uncaring, I believed salvation to be beyond my grasp, that I was condemned to this hell forever. For nothing is more empty and more demeaning than sharing an act of love with someone you feel nothing for. It is an act of revulsion, a mental rape of every kind; the bodily fluids men release into you pool inside, until the tears you shed are milky white and viscous. Every word you say turns into a lie, and you do not know the truth from the falsehood, and then you cease to care. I hated men, I hated their raw desire for my body, for that had been my downfall and my hell. I had no willpower left to take my own life, and I had denied God, forever barring myself from Heaven. I was twice damned.

You must understand, I was not _destined_ from birth to lead this sordid life of dealing with men's lives. I was an ordinary girl from an ordinary town, and until that fateful day, my life consisted of my family and the confines imposed upon by my parents, the curious stories told through generations of my ancestor's travels… an ordinary child. But life, as you may know, dear reader, is a fickle thing, to give out misfortunes to one but not the other; and that was the case with me."

Oh, didn't he know that lesson well; it was a lesson most Assassins learned before ever joining the Order, and that lesson was often the very reason why they joined in the first place. Dealt one cruel hand, one had far to fall, and fallen to the nadir, they often turned to the Order for salvation and self-validation that nothing else ever offered. But then, Arno caught the next line, and stopped.

"I do not ask for forgiveness," Elizabeth wrote. "Heaven's Gates are forever closed to me, but that was the choice I made, one of the very first in my life. But rather, I write this in hope of remembrance of my family, now gone, and to chronicle the transformation of one ordinary young girl into what I am now; for it is difficult to live in a man's world as a woman, even more so when the action of one can change the lives of many.

I do not regret my life. Do I wish for things to have been different, I indeed do; I wish none of the events of that night had happened. But the choices I had made are all mine, and I do not regret them.

I am Elizabeth Falconwood, an Assassin of the Alamut Castle."


End file.
